A Dog’s Breakfast
So. Dog food.
Talking with our friend Andrew the other day about our new housemate, we happened on the topic of shopping for dog food. He pointed out that to observe the marketing of dog food is, and I paraphrase here, “to enter a parallel universe where words have no meaning.”
Case in point: our first bag of dog food was Rachael Ray Nutrish Just 6 limited ingredient kibble. We have no great love for Rachel Ray (just say “Nutritious”, it’s not that hard a word!), but since dog food often seems to be an amalgam of every possible industrial food byproduct, it seemed like opting for a brand based on a limited list of common sense ingredients might be a good starting place. Unfortunately, the ingredient list for “Just 6″ dog food is not just six items long. It has 29 ingredients, most of which seem to be vitamin and mineral supplements or other chemical additives. Of the top six ingredients five of them are relatively recognizable, although weirdly one of these is “beet pulp” – apparently a byproduct of sugar beet processing. The sixth is “natural chicken flavor”, a term which in itself has little fathomable meaning.
As it turns out, Just 6 gets “mid-tier” rating over at Dog Food Advisor (did you ever doubt there were websites devoted to dog food reviews?), seemingly because a number of the ingredients are sort of on the sketchy side and the supplements aren’t processed in a way that makes them easy to digest. This is actually a better rating than the rest of the Nutrish line, which gets a below-average grade. So maybe they weren’t allowed to use the actual word “nutritious” for legal reasons.
So what are you to do if you want to feed your dog food made out of food? Some folks follow a “raw feeding” regimen, or the BARF diet (“biologically appropriate raw food” or “bones and raw food”). This approach seems like it has produced health and safety concerns, and anyway as vegetarians, we’re not excited about the idea of dealing with a bunch of raw meat and bones. But of course that’s for our benefit rather than the benefit of the livestock whose parts eventually make their way into Rachel Ray’s kibble as well. Plus it would probably be a lot more expensive.
So for now we’re sticking with kibble, but not with Just 6. I bought a bag of Nutro Ultra, which actually has almost twice as many ingredients than the Just 6, but apparently scores higher for nutrition. Tina’s planning on making her own dog biscuits, so at least we’ll know what’s in those.
I, too, am a vegetarian. However, my husband and I have seen such a change in our dogs’ (we have two little guys) health, including teeth and breath, since we changed them to a real meat diet that I have to say it is worth having meat in our house. We are saving on vet bills and they seem so much happier to be eating the food that their bodies are meant to eat. We use a dedicated cast iron pan to cook the meat so there is no chance of contamination with the foods we eat. Our oldest dog, who is 16 years old now, had stopped eating any type of commercial dog food and this is what has helped him to live longer.
I really enjoy your blog!
How trusting I was to buy Rachel Ray 6 ingredient dog food and assume it only had 6 ingredients in it. If someone is suing Subway that their foot-long sandwich is only 11 inches, do you think we have a case here? :O) OK, like RR says, everything in moderation (as she adds the heavy cream.)
I make our dog food, but not all the time and only because we are so cheap. I save all our kitchen scraps like potato peels, carrot peels, celery tops etc, stuff that is too good to put in the compost pile. I buy cheap hamburger meat and cook it all up in the crock pot. My sister once ate some thinking it was leftovers, and thought I had lost all my cooking talent! Anyway, the dog loves it and she get very excited over it. I still feel weird buying meat for it though, I want to announce to the other customers THIS IS FOR THE DOG!!!!
We have experimented a lot with dog food, and I’m glad to see that the two main ones we use, Origen and Taste of the Wild, score pretty highly (on that site I didn’t know existed!).
We also tried the BARF diet and may try it again, but even as meat eaters we were a little grossed out by the raw meat and bones. Whichever we choose we try to stay grain-free for them, I threat that makes biological sense and seems to keep their coats shiny and healthy and them not as gassy as when they eat foods with grains.
Really, really love the name of the BARF diet. We switched to this: http://www.youngagainpetfood.com — and everyone seems much happier.